Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
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Speaker 1: com slash Fried Egg member SIPC. We are back with
Speaker 1: a new episode of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: I am joined by Managing editor of The Fried Egg,
Speaker 1: Garrett Morrison. Garrett and I just got back from a
Speaker 1: trip through North Carolina and South Carolina. We hit up
Speaker 1: a couple courses and we're going to break them down
Speaker 1: for you today and this will be a two parter.
Speaker 1: So in part one we will cover Old Town Club
Speaker 1: in Reynolds Park in Winston Salem, and before part three
Speaker 1: we jump over to Roaring Gap Aken and Paul Meadow
Speaker 1: without further ado.
Speaker 2: Here is Garrett Morrison. I miss a green for example,
Speaker 2: I'm already upset.
Speaker 1: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I find my ball in a bright Egg
Speaker 3: Friday Egg, the Dreaded Frida Egg Friday frid egg Bright, egg.
Speaker 2: Frida, egg Bride, egg Lie.
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 2: Garrett. What's happening up in uh Oregon?
Speaker 3: A lot of rain, a lot of gray skies, not
Speaker 3: much golf, but you know, I don't I don't really
Speaker 3: play golf when I'm at home anymore. It's it's just
Speaker 3: on trips.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it's kind of It's not terrible my life too, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I've been traveling a ton though lately, so it's it's been.
Speaker 1: It's just nice being home in general.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've been away a lot more than you've been home, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been. It's been bad.
Speaker 1: I I'm going to enact a travel ban here in November.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be mandatory home time.
Speaker 3: So it's Friday travel ban.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, but uh so we uh we were
Speaker 1: together though, we uh playing more Perry Maxwell's. You know,
Speaker 1: it seems like the only time we're going to be
Speaker 1: together just playing Perry Maxwell's.
Speaker 3: It's not terrible, but it has been a very Perry
Speaker 3: Maxwell summer for sure. We've we've traveled to play a
Speaker 3: few of his courses and they've all been awesome.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they I mean, I'm in like in a
Speaker 1: deep love affair with Perry Maxwell now, which is it's
Speaker 1: not bad thing, but it's just amazing how few people
Speaker 1: talk about them. I'm just amazed in general.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why do you think that is?
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the more I more I think
Speaker 1: about it, is like he didn't design any golf course
Speaker 1: in New York or California.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you think it's as simple, Yeah, don't really get
Speaker 3: to them.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just like if you compare it to
Speaker 1: like anything like sports or all the coverage goes to
Speaker 1: like the New York teams and the l A teams
Speaker 1: because they have huge markets, right, Yeah, and he didn't
Speaker 1: design anything in Chicago, he didn't design anything in any
Speaker 1: of the biggest cities in the in the country, That's right,
Speaker 1: and then nobody gives him the credit he deserves for Augusta.
Speaker 3: Very true as well. Right, everybody everybody wants to talk
Speaker 3: about Mackenzie and Bobby Jones there because they're sort of
Speaker 3: romantic figures. But a ton of those greens are are
Speaker 3: Perry Maxwell greens, and they're and they're very very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we were at before we went to the Thoroughbred,
Speaker 1: which was at Aiken and we can talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about Aiken and Palmetto. We did Winston Salem, so
Speaker 1: we did Reynolds Park and Old Town Club, and then
Speaker 1: we drove up which are both Perry Maxwell courses. Reynolds
Speaker 1: Park is the municipal golf course in Winston Salem, and
Speaker 1: then we drove up to Roaring Gap, which is at
Speaker 1: Donal Ross in the Mountain. So let's let's just kick
Speaker 1: it off by starting to talk about Reynolds Park. This
Speaker 1: was I guess I saw Moresville too in Charlotte, which
Speaker 1: is a dal Ross Chris spent project, which good, you know,
Speaker 1: affordable place to play that's close to Charlotte.
Speaker 2: You know, I think there.
Speaker 1: It's not something I would go out of my way
Speaker 1: to go play, but it's a it's a very good
Speaker 1: public option for golf. It it's got really interesting land
Speaker 1: on the front nine, which is the Ross original nine,
Speaker 1: and you can just it's the the course added nine
Speaker 1: holes in the sixties. It's really interesting to see just
Speaker 1: the difference in the uh in the routing in terms
Speaker 1: of like how intimate and close together the front nine
Speaker 1: is and how it uses the land. And then you
Speaker 1: go to the back nine and it's it's basically like
Speaker 1: cut out of a forest, you know, and every hole
Speaker 1: is its own own hole, own corridor, like you can't
Speaker 1: see anything else going around.
Speaker 2: And and I.
Speaker 1: Mean you can tell that Chris didn't have a ton
Speaker 1: of stuff to work with on that back nine when
Speaker 1: he was doing his redesign, because the doors were so narrow,
Speaker 1: there were homes that had been added, and uh, you
Speaker 1: know it just it was really an interesting juxtaposition and uh,
Speaker 1: but but a really nice course, good shape, it's walkable.
Speaker 2: I would recommend it.
Speaker 1: I'd go play there again if I was, like if
Speaker 1: I flew into Charlotte and had an afternoon or if
Speaker 1: I lived there. It's a it's a really good place
Speaker 1: to play for public.
Speaker 3: Off, right, And that would be that's Morrisville, Moorville, Mooresville.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's about twenty five minutes north of Charlotte.
Speaker 1: So I need to go back and do a proper
Speaker 1: Charlotte tour. But I just needed something quick in the
Speaker 1: afternoon to go see.
Speaker 2: And that one checks some boxes, right.
Speaker 3: What you're describing just there with the ross nine and
Speaker 3: then and then another nine added to it struck me
Speaker 3: as very similar to Thandara, which guest author Colin Chris
Speaker 3: wrote about on our website not too long ago, where
Speaker 3: you have this this intimate sort of interlocking routing with
Speaker 3: a kind of open plan contrasted with a later nine
Speaker 3: that goes through the woods. It seems like there's there's
Speaker 3: not just one place where that's the case. But obviously
Speaker 3: one of them is a little more more fun to
Speaker 3: play than the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think you see it all over
Speaker 1: the place too, Like with Langford and Moreau, they built
Speaker 1: a lot of nine hole courses in the Midwest, and
Speaker 1: then you see them add another nine. You know, these
Speaker 1: courses add another nine in the nineteen sixties seventies. You know,
Speaker 1: you go down the list, like there's a course in Laporte,
Speaker 1: Indiana called Legacy Hills and the front nine is all
Speaker 1: original Langford Moreau and it's really could be something else.
Speaker 1: Like it's amazing because I had an old Ariel and
Speaker 1: you can see the shadowing because of how deep some
Speaker 1: of these bunkers were, and you can just see this
Speaker 1: like intense shadowing on like a nineteen forty Aeriel, which
Speaker 1: is crazy. And then but then they added a nine.
Speaker 1: You know, you got like Race Pond and it weaves
Speaker 1: through housing, a housing development, and it's just like that
Speaker 1: covers three times the amount of land that the Front
Speaker 1: nine does, and it's a far less interesting golf in
Speaker 1: my opinion, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, pretty typical story. So I was in the air
Speaker 3: flying out to Charlotte when you were looking at that course.
Speaker 3: And the next day we drove out toward Winston Salem,
Speaker 3: where before going to the Wake Forest Campus, an old town,
Speaker 3: we stopped by Reynolds Park, which is a municipal course
Speaker 3: designed by Perry Maxwell. And I think it's safe to
Speaker 3: say that we are both blown away by what we
Speaker 3: found there, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that was I'd been looking at Reynolds Park
Speaker 1: for like two years on Google Maps, and obviously the
Speaker 1: one thing that never shows is topography, and I had
Speaker 1: no clue what we were going to find there, and
Speaker 1: I mean it was.
Speaker 2: It was stunning.
Speaker 1: It just jumped to the top of near the top
Speaker 1: or the top of the list of golf courses that
Speaker 1: I want to see restored.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ultra dramatic land. There are kind of two general
Speaker 3: sections of the course. They're not separated by nines. It's
Speaker 3: more like there are six holes on one side of
Speaker 3: the highway and then there are the other twelve holes
Speaker 3: on the other side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like one, two, three play and then you
Speaker 1: cross the road and then it finishes the nine and
Speaker 1: then the back nine all on that other side.
Speaker 3: Right and where the back nine is is I think
Speaker 3: where we both started to really see some classic Perry
Speaker 3: Maxwell stuff. The way the holes went right over the
Speaker 3: boldest features in the land. Both sides of the road
Speaker 3: were really cool. I think that there has been more
Speaker 3: modern intervention on the other side of the road with
Speaker 3: the front nine, but still just the Obviously it's an
Speaker 3: overused term, but the sheer scale of the land is
Speaker 3: incredibly impressive, and there are some holes out there that
Speaker 3: are just completely unique looking to my eye. It was
Speaker 3: really really exciting to see that there. Obviously, it needs
Speaker 3: some work, it needs some support, but what a cool
Speaker 3: golf course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like one of my favorite things about just
Speaker 1: going to these golf courses, like you never know what
Speaker 1: to expect.
Speaker 2: And we went there on I think it was Tuesday morning.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It was it was like kind of gray and windy.
Speaker 3: Not good light for taking photos, and the.
Speaker 1: Course was packed though. It was filled with with golfers
Speaker 1: and yes, and we ended up, we parked and we
Speaker 1: went over and we were on the on the holes,
Speaker 1: the section that holds four through nine, and we just
Speaker 1: started walking around and I think like we got over
Speaker 1: the hill and both of us were just like, holy cow,
Speaker 1: couldn't believe what was like what unfolded down in front
Speaker 1: of us. And you know, you're walking around that side
Speaker 1: I was, you know, in you can see that the
Speaker 1: bunkers have been messed around with. But then you know,
Speaker 1: there were a few greens out there that like were
Speaker 1: distinctly Maxwell greens where you saw his his rolls or
Speaker 1: as as as Dunlop White who at Old Town Club
Speaker 1: coin muffined in the greens, and it was just like, God,
Speaker 1: how does no way talk about this way like? And
Speaker 1: it's just it just was an amazing place in terms
Speaker 1: of for somebody that dreams about what it could be.
Speaker 1: And I know I'm guilty of being a golf course dreamer.
Speaker 3: Well with that one, it's completely legitimate to dream about
Speaker 3: what it could be, because there are a lot of
Speaker 3: courses where that dreamers are attracted to where you're just
Speaker 3: never going to get back what was there, and it's
Speaker 3: almost fruitless to try to pursue it, But at Reynolds
Speaker 3: Park you wouldn't really need to do much. It's basically
Speaker 3: all still there. I think a lot of what the
Speaker 3: course needs probably has to do with deferred maintenance. But
Speaker 3: it's a cool course already and there's not much that
Speaker 3: would need to happen to it in order to make
Speaker 3: it instantly one of the best municipal courses in the
Speaker 3: country in my opinion. But yeah, the greens, a lot
Speaker 3: of the greens are still there. In fact, it's stunning
Speaker 3: some of the stuff that's still there because there's some
Speaker 3: really there are some really quirky moves in that design,
Speaker 3: and a lot of that is intact, maybe because somebody
Speaker 3: just preserved it or maybe through a process of benign neglect.
Speaker 3: But when you walk around, you really see what that
Speaker 3: design was. It was funny. I was out there, you know,
Speaker 3: looking at the back nine and just taking some photos
Speaker 3: and really getting into it, and I was approached by
Speaker 3: the superintendent of the course, a guy named Ryan mcclannon,
Speaker 3: and he asked me what I was doing, and I
Speaker 3: told him, and he was really really nice guy, and
Speaker 3: he was like, yeah, I was just afraid that, you know,
Speaker 3: we've had some problems recently with kids coming out here
Speaker 3: and playing Pokemon Go, and I was wondering if you
Speaker 3: were one of those people. But once he found out
Speaker 3: what I was doing, he was super welcoming and we
Speaker 3: were totally free to just kind of walk around the place.
Speaker 3: But that's kind of the vibe of the place, very casual,
Speaker 3: and it's it's part of the community.
Speaker 2: Said for Pokemon Go apparently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not only is it.
Speaker 1: A you know, something that could be great golf course,
Speaker 1: it also is a you know, regular spot for people
Speaker 1: searching for Pokemont.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, who needs foot golf when you when you
Speaker 3: have a Pokemon venue.
Speaker 1: It's uh but uh yeah, the that uh that place
Speaker 1: it was I think both of us were walking around
Speaker 1: that that one side, the first side we were on,
Speaker 1: which is four through nine, and we were like, this
Speaker 1: is unreal. And I personally was expecting to cross the
Speaker 1: road and see something like way different and and uh
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be like way better, world's
Speaker 1: better on the.
Speaker 2: Other side of the road, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We thought we had seen the good stuff when
Speaker 3: we saw the front nine or the six holes on
Speaker 3: that side of the road, but the good stuff really
Speaker 3: is on on the other side that the tenth hole
Speaker 3: out there, the seventeenth hole, just going over these big contours,
Speaker 3: these kind of waves in the land that you see
Speaker 3: Maxwell going directly over on a lot of his best courses. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can. You can see the routing, you can see
Speaker 3: the holes as they were designed. It's a pretty exciting place.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, there's a there's a spot where the kind
Speaker 1: of the low point on that side of the land
Speaker 1: is in is in the corner of the property, and
Speaker 1: both the thirteenth and the seventeenth play down into it
Speaker 1: from different angles, and the greens are just benched one
Speaker 1: on top of the other. The thirteenth sits just slightly
Speaker 1: above it on a ridge, and then the seventeenth place
Speaker 1: under it down on another ridge, and it's just like
Speaker 1: that spot, I'm just like holy, like you know, that
Speaker 1: was where I turned and looked at I was just like,
Speaker 1: my god, I cannot believe this place exists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Yeah, it was great. I'd love to go
Speaker 3: back there actually and and dig in some more, but
Speaker 3: we might have some stuff coming up on that. We
Speaker 3: did get some pictures and and hopefully i'd be able
Speaker 3: to all be able to write something about it eventually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got to figure out when that what's going
Speaker 1: on with the management situation, because it's it's just a
Speaker 1: place that it's begging for restoration. And you talk about
Speaker 1: all the great municipal courses and I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: to put it into perspective for somebody, is it's got
Speaker 1: it's got land, like the land is could be is
Speaker 1: very similar to Bethpage Black's land, but it's Perry Maxwell
Speaker 1: with really interesting greens.
Speaker 2: Like in terms of the.
Speaker 1: Muscular it's not you know, it's not as expansive in
Speaker 1: the routing how Bethpage Black covers just a ton of property.
Speaker 2: It's more intimate.
Speaker 1: But in terms of the movement and the and the
Speaker 1: ridges and the and you know, you're hitting up and
Speaker 1: you're hitting you're teeing off from let from ridges down
Speaker 1: and hitting down. In terms of the sheer up elevation movement,
Speaker 1: it would be it would be similar to that, but
Speaker 1: in a much more intimate setting for golf, where you
Speaker 1: especially if they did to re removal you, I mean,
Speaker 1: you'd see all across the golf course on the on
Speaker 1: the from holes one through three, and uh and nine
Speaker 1: through eighteen, you'd see you could see everybody basically everywhere.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And when when Jeff Shackelfer talks about how
Speaker 3: one of the great things that the USGA could do
Speaker 3: would be to help generate funds to restore and renovate
Speaker 3: great city municipal courses, I think Reynolds Park is absolutely
Speaker 3: the perfect candidate for that because, as I said earlier,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't have to do much. The land is still there,
Speaker 3: the routing is still there, many of the greens are
Speaker 3: still there. It would just take a little bit to
Speaker 3: push that place over the top. I can think of
Speaker 3: a few other courses and a few other cities that
Speaker 3: are similar and would benefit similarly from that kind of program,
Speaker 3: but Reynolds Park really is the perfect example of of
Speaker 3: course that would benefit from that.
Speaker 1: A place that reminds me too, like that in that
Speaker 1: same vein would be there's a Stanley Thompson designed sleepy
Speaker 1: hollow in Cleveland that's unbelievable too, like similar, similar state
Speaker 1: where it's just sitting there and you know, really great
Speaker 1: land and really great design.
Speaker 2: That's just it's just.
Speaker 1: Because nothing ever happened really bad, it's still just there,
Speaker 1: you know, which is you know we talked, I talk
Speaker 1: to so many architects that have said that, like, sometimes
Speaker 1: the best thing that can happen is never having money
Speaker 1: to screw it up. In Reynolds Park, it probably falls
Speaker 1: into that bucket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. Isn't there a municipal ross course out in
Speaker 3: Cleveland as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Manikiki, it's really good. I think Sleepy Hollow. I
Speaker 1: Sleepy Hollow's got a lot more potential, but they're both
Speaker 1: really really good.
Speaker 2: Like where.
Speaker 1: I always think of it this way as like if
Speaker 1: you if they if they turned into a private club
Speaker 1: and got to do a restoration, like, man, there's a
Speaker 1: chance Sleepy Hollow would be the best course in all
Speaker 1: of Cleveland.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, there was a time when a lot of
Speaker 3: the best terrain for golf around cities was used for
Speaker 3: municipal courses. Right, There was a time when these tracks
Speaker 3: of land that had huge potential specifically for golf were
Speaker 3: actually devoted to golf. And that time is not that
Speaker 3: that's no longer the time we live in, right, we
Speaker 3: have to look elsewhere for that land now. But that's
Speaker 3: why these municipal courses, these city courses built in the
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties and especially in the nineteen thirties and the
Speaker 3: air of the works progress administration are so valuable, such
Speaker 3: great resources for the golf world because so many of
Speaker 3: them are built on pieces of land that we would
Speaker 3: just the public would no longer have access to anymore.
Speaker 3: And there and they're still there. They just need a
Speaker 3: little bit of help, a little bit of capital, a
Speaker 3: little bit of support. And that's definitely easier said than done. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's going to come from before. Yeah, that's and that's
Speaker 3: tough in city government, right, it's not a people are
Speaker 3: dealing with really immediate and I'd sympathize with the city
Speaker 3: governments are dealing with a lot of really immediate problems.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think if you're a council person in
Speaker 3: the Cleveland area, are you really thinking about golf all
Speaker 3: that much? Maybe not, or in Winston Salem for that matter.
Speaker 3: But I think that that if you take the long
Speaker 3: view and you see the potential of these places, that
Speaker 3: that kind of work on golf courses, that sort of
Speaker 3: input could be a real value to many communities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's an opportunity. I think if if
Speaker 1: this cop trick thing goes well, which I did a
Speaker 1: podcast on with Joe Bosh and Mike Serba, and Philadelphia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where they've done where they've gotten the they've gotten a
Speaker 1: private lease and it's privately funded and you know, but
Speaker 1: it's going to remain essentially run like a municipal would
Speaker 1: be run in the census for the people. I think
Speaker 1: if that can be a big, smashing success, it could
Speaker 1: really changed the future for a lot of these places.
Speaker 3: Yeah, domino effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think we'd hope for Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also you know, Washington, d C. With East Potomac
Speaker 1: would be another example.
Speaker 3: All Right. The hope is that we've seen in the
Speaker 3: past fifteen to twenty years a restoration movement in the
Speaker 3: private club sector, and the hope is that that would
Speaker 3: move eventually to public access golf. But that's a very
Speaker 3: difficult transition.
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Speaker 2: Now back to our podcast.
Speaker 3: But it's funny because you know, right after we saw
Speaker 3: Reynolds Park, this great candidate for restoration, we went over
Speaker 3: to Old Town Club, which represents I think many of
Speaker 3: the best aspects of the private club restoration movement. We
Speaker 3: got over to Old Town Club that evening after we
Speaker 3: had seen Reynolds Park, and once again, you know, this
Speaker 3: was another really pleasant surprise. Immediately taken by this course.
Speaker 3: What were some of your first impressions of it?
Speaker 1: Well, it was just interesting because we went from a
Speaker 1: course where you're like Wow, this thing could be really
Speaker 1: really great. You know, to a course that like right
Speaker 1: down the road that essentially is what Reynolds Park could be.
Speaker 1: You know, it was like looking like you're walking off
Speaker 1: and it's like, yep, this is this is what it is.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I mean Old Town Club. I two years ago. I
Speaker 1: started doing this because I it's hard because there's so
Speaker 1: many places I want to go see and given years
Speaker 1: and I started to make lists of five five courses
Speaker 1: that I wanted to see, like, and they be in
Speaker 1: different parts of the country. So because knowing that, like
Speaker 1: you go one of these places, you're going to see
Speaker 1: some other stuff while you're there. And like two years ago,
Speaker 1: I had Old Town like on this list and I
Speaker 1: didn't get there that year, and then we're getting to
Speaker 1: the end of this year and I was like, I
Speaker 1: got to get there. So it was it was great
Speaker 1: to finally see it. It lived up to all my expectations.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing. It's an amazing golf course. Especially, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just stunning to see. I think in terms of
Speaker 1: all the places we played, it's the most maxwell like
Speaker 1: in comparison to Southern Hills and Perry Dunes, there's more
Speaker 1: Maxwell preserved and showing at at Old Town than anywhere else.
Speaker 2: Like they've got they've got it all the way.
Speaker 1: You know, it's one of the courses that is getting
Speaker 1: the most out of its course that I've seen. You know,
Speaker 1: from a standpoint of presentation, Like you don't walk around
Speaker 1: there and say like, oh if they if they did this,
Speaker 1: it would really bump it. It's like it's pretty maxed
Speaker 1: out ast you know, like it's great.
Speaker 3: They've gotten there. Yeah, it was really cool to see
Speaker 3: a course kind of fulfilling its potential in that way.
Speaker 3: And just to give a little background on Old Town Club,
Speaker 3: it was built in early nineteen thirty nine by Perry Maxwell.
Speaker 3: So nineteen thirty nine is quite late in the Golden Age.
Speaker 3: In fact, many people would say Old Town Club is
Speaker 3: the last great work of the Golden Age of golf
Speaker 3: course architecture, and so in that sense it's already of
Speaker 3: historical interest. But it was built after Prairie Dunes, after
Speaker 3: Southern Hill. This is Perry Maxwell maybe at his most mature.
Speaker 3: And then you know, through the years, Old Town Club
Speaker 3: I think was always regarded as a really good course,
Speaker 3: but it lost some of its initial character in the
Speaker 3: usual ways, you know that, a lot of tree planting
Speaker 3: and kind of shrinking more shrinking greens. Yeah, more conformity
Speaker 3: in the mowing lines and the bunker shapes and all
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. And so in twenty thirteen, after
Speaker 3: what sounds like years of activism on the part of
Speaker 3: Dunlop White, who's currently the golf chairman at Old Town Club,
Speaker 3: the club hired Bill Corer and Ben Crenshaw to come
Speaker 3: in and restore the course essentially to the form that
Speaker 3: it's in now. And Bill Corps still visits the place
Speaker 3: and gives suggestions. It's an ongoing process, but it truly
Speaker 3: is a wonderful restoration. So yeah, So, okay. One of
Speaker 3: the remarkable things about Old Town is it's it's land, right,
Speaker 3: And I've been struggling to come up with a way
Speaker 3: to describe this land because it's it's not like prairie dunes,
Speaker 3: it's not like southern hills, you know, it's it's something
Speaker 3: else that's maybe in between those two in some way
Speaker 3: or another. How how would you describe what the topography
Speaker 3: is like out there?
Speaker 1: So it's it's clay based soil, So it's not like
Speaker 1: prairie dunes is sand and it it's not like saying
Speaker 1: it's just I don't know how to explain it. To
Speaker 1: be honest, it's it's very it's very muscular. It's got
Speaker 1: these big landforms that you play over, and but at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's a very small piece of land, right,
Speaker 1: everything is really packed into there. And the way the
Speaker 1: course plays, you play the first three out, you play
Speaker 1: on one side of the clubhouse, and then you go
Speaker 1: back to the other side, and the fourth hole plays
Speaker 1: up this crest and you don't really see from the clubhouse,
Speaker 1: and from the first three holes you don't really know
Speaker 1: what's coming up. But then you play the fourth hole
Speaker 1: and you crest this hill and it's just like an
Speaker 1: open expanse of golf. And you've got you've got creeks
Speaker 1: that run through it that are similar to the way
Speaker 1: Southern Hills has the dominant creek that runs through it,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know the you know the river kind
Speaker 1: of it's a big river bed essentially, and then uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's a very oddly shaped property too. That's
Speaker 1: the thing is that I remember Bill Corr talking about
Speaker 1: this one I when I interviewed him, because he said
Speaker 1: Old Town Club was one of, you know, the most
Speaker 1: impactful courses he'd ever you know, he visited early and
Speaker 1: I asked why he goes how he fit eighteen holes
Speaker 1: on that property, The way its shaped, the and how
Speaker 1: severe it is is truly remarkable, and like then going
Speaker 1: out and seeing it, And that's like one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I wanted to see Old Town so bad, was
Speaker 1: what Bill Corr said on the podcast about it. And
Speaker 1: and I just don't think a lot of architects would
Speaker 1: have been able to get, Like if you gave them
Speaker 1: that site with nothing on it, I don't think a
Speaker 1: lot of architects would be able to get eighteen great
Speaker 1: holes on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I agree with that. It's a weird site. It's
Speaker 3: not only kind of compact, but it's also got odd
Speaker 3: landforms on it. Yeah, and Maxwell actually turned that to
Speaker 3: an advantage, right. He took these really abrupt, severe year
Speaker 3: landforms that maybe most architects would avoid, and he routed
Speaker 3: holes over them that really work.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it has got all those corners. Yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: got it's got like a corner where one and two
Speaker 1: are like one green and two plays into then it's
Speaker 1: got a corner where five green and six te is
Speaker 1: and then it's got another corner where ten plays intwo
Speaker 1: and then it's got where eleven like it's it's just
Speaker 1: like a there. There are probably eight corners of the
Speaker 1: property that the course goes to, right.
Speaker 3: There must have been a lot of points in the
Speaker 3: routing where it looked like before the golf course was built,
Speaker 3: there was nowhere to go. Yeah, when you got back
Speaker 3: to say the fifteenth green, the par three that goes
Speaker 3: back into one of these corners and get to the
Speaker 3: sixteenth tee, who would think of routing the sixteenth hole?
Speaker 3: This par four that goes over to big Ridge is
Speaker 3: to a green perched on top of the second ridge.
Speaker 3: Who would think of of routing that golfle When you
Speaker 3: look at it, it it looks incredible and it and
Speaker 3: it works right, It plays really well. But I don't
Speaker 3: think many architects would have the daring to put that
Speaker 3: hole there and not move much land, which is something
Speaker 3: that Perry and Maxwell never did, right. He just didn't
Speaker 3: move a whole lot of land, and and those holes
Speaker 3: go over that most architects would eliminate.
Speaker 2: He did just not move land.
Speaker 1: He was a he was anybody that moved land the
Speaker 1: steamshovel hater he was. He was.
Speaker 3: He was a fanatic about it, Yeah he was. He
Speaker 3: subtweeted Langford and Moreau pretty much constantly in every public
Speaker 3: utterance he made.
Speaker 2: We think it was like for I mean, it got
Speaker 2: to be right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were working in the same region of the
Speaker 1: country at the same time, and they had two completely
Speaker 1: wildly different, wildly different style.
Speaker 3: Else Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: But at the same.
Speaker 1: Time, they shared a lot of the same things. Like
Speaker 1: like Lankford Barreau, the way they routed golf courses to
Speaker 1: be is very similar. Like the way they used landforms
Speaker 1: was very similar to the way Perry Maxwell, where they
Speaker 1: would drape them over these big contours and use the
Speaker 1: big contours as and but they were just so wildly
Speaker 1: different at the green you know and building hassards. But
Speaker 1: I think that in terms of routing, there's a lot
Speaker 1: and I think that might be part of like those
Speaker 1: two guys they learned from the fact that they worked
Speaker 1: on all these sites that were really tough sites in
Speaker 1: the Midwest, and you know, the great planes and and
Speaker 1: they you know, they did not That's the thing why
Speaker 1: Perry Maxwell amazes me so much is because he was
Speaker 1: giving given so much less than so many other architects
Speaker 1: with what he had to start to work from, whether
Speaker 1: it was you know, building in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Great Depression where you just have less to work with
Speaker 1: in general, or from the sites and the soils that
Speaker 1: he worked on as opposed to if you got to
Speaker 1: work on Long Island exclusively, like you're building on sand, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a little bit different than building on
Speaker 1: you know, North Carolina clay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we saw some of we've seen some of
Speaker 3: the best sites that he got to work on too. Right,
Speaker 3: Prairie Dunes obviously was a blessed site. And that's why
Speaker 3: that golf course is special because you get Perry maxwhile
Speaker 3: working on that kind of site. You can't get anything
Speaker 3: but one of the best golf courses in the world,
Speaker 3: which those original nine holes. I think that certainly certainly are.
Speaker 3: And you know, Old Town's got some cool features and
Speaker 3: it's got a varied landscape, and so the holes are
Speaker 3: are from each other, instantly, instantly memorable. No hole is
Speaker 3: anywhere near being like any other hole on that course.
Speaker 3: And that's partly because of the variety of landforms, but
Speaker 3: also it's a it's a credit to the genius of
Speaker 3: the routing.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So one of my favorite questions when with a course,
Speaker 1: especially for a course like Old Town, it's not like
Speaker 1: everybody always what's your favorite hole? What's the weakest hole
Speaker 1: at Old Town?
Speaker 3: See, I was just thinking, not specifically about that question,
Speaker 3: but about Old Town's weaknesses, And I was thinking that
Speaker 3: one of the things that was distinctive about Old Town
Speaker 3: is that it has very very few weaknesses, right it
Speaker 3: is when we talked about Prairie Dunes a month or
Speaker 3: two ago on the podcast, I think both of us
Speaker 3: could easily identify some weaknesses in that golf course. I
Speaker 3: think that Southern Hills might have some weaknesses as well
Speaker 3: that are explained by the nature of the land. But
Speaker 3: the par three's that Southern Hills aren't exactly the most
Speaker 3: memorable holes at that course, I think to an extent,
Speaker 3: you could say the same at Old Town, where when
Speaker 3: you think about the best holes at Old Town, almost
Speaker 3: all of them that immediately come to mind mind are
Speaker 3: par four's and par fives, the long holes. And so
Speaker 3: you know, if there's if there's any critique I think
Speaker 3: I'd make, it's that the par threes don't stand out
Speaker 3: quite as much. But the par threes are are really good,
Speaker 3: you know, like they're they're very very good golf holes,
Speaker 3: and they're not They're not dull by any stretch of
Speaker 3: the imagination. They just don't quite rise to the level
Speaker 3: of the others. Other than that, I'd have a really
Speaker 3: hard time identifying the weakest hole. Maybe the fifteenth hole.
Speaker 3: I don't know, that has a cool green though, that's
Speaker 3: a that's a green. Yeah, yeah, so, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's kind of cool. How the how the par threes build.
Speaker 1: One of the things that it does it Old Town
Speaker 1: is they build like they get. They start with the
Speaker 1: shortest one is number two, then then number six is
Speaker 1: a little bit longer. I think it plays about one seventy.
Speaker 1: Number two plays like one fifty or one forty five,
Speaker 1: and then uh then number eleven plays to ten, and
Speaker 1: then number five is like to forty.
Speaker 3: You know, different directions, right, they're all yeah, they're all
Speaker 3: facing different directions. Yeah, I mean they're still well designed.
Speaker 3: Maybe the weakest tall the course is number eighteen. Maybe
Speaker 3: that would be it.
Speaker 2: That green's awesome though.
Speaker 3: It's a great green.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm okay, Well, so what what's what do you
Speaker 3: think is the weakest tall at all Town? What do
Speaker 3: you think number one?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Number one is great? So yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, I see it. That's why I asked you.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to answer this question right exactly. I
Speaker 3: think that that that is exactly one of the one
Speaker 3: of the distinctive things about Old Town though, is that
Speaker 3: it's really hard to identify weaknesses of the course, either
Speaker 3: among the holes, weak links in the in the routing.
Speaker 3: And it's also tough at this point after the work
Speaker 3: that Corn Crenshaw have done there, it's tough to identify
Speaker 3: weaknesses in the presentation and set up of the course. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's pretty strong all around too.
Speaker 2: I loved.
Speaker 1: There are some things about the restoration that I like,
Speaker 1: really really loved.
Speaker 2: Is that.
Speaker 1: A the aesthetics of it, like the sand just like
Speaker 1: even the sand color. The choice of the sand color
Speaker 1: is it just like shows that they they knew what they.
Speaker 2: Were going for.
Speaker 1: Like you see so many clubs do these restorations, and
Speaker 1: you know they put these the white sand in, the
Speaker 1: bright white sand in and it's like it just doesn't fit.
Speaker 1: You're trying to restore your court like and it it
Speaker 1: takes out of like makes it less of a hazard.
Speaker 1: It's like the perfect light just designed to make it easy.
Speaker 1: And at old time they got this just like this
Speaker 1: orange sand not orange, but like I'm color blind, so
Speaker 1: I can't even tell you what color it is really,
Speaker 1: but like it's like this, like.
Speaker 3: It's sort of yeah, it's browner. It's it's darker in
Speaker 3: color than the than than the blinding white sand that
Speaker 3: you see a lot of different places, and rockier too,
Speaker 3: Like there's you know, they're not afraid of having not
Speaker 3: having it be perfectly pillowy, fine all the way through.
Speaker 1: And I almost always, like I go places like one
Speaker 1: that sticks out of my head is like Inverness.
Speaker 2: I go.
Speaker 1: I went there and and you know, they did the
Speaker 1: restoration and you just like look around and you're like, god,
Speaker 1: there should be so much more fair away. Like you
Speaker 1: just see the la right where the faraway should be.
Speaker 1: And it's not because they're they're chasing championship golf, but like,
Speaker 1: you know, the at the same time, it's like this
Speaker 1: is a member's golf course, Like they're like that that
Speaker 1: landform screams fairway, you know, because you see right where
Speaker 1: the fairway line was and and at old Town never once,
Speaker 1: not once in the whole you know, two days there,
Speaker 1: I ever look and be like, you know, they could
Speaker 1: add fairaway here like it is they actually have the
Speaker 1: lines out to where I think it's right and where
Speaker 1: you know, like it's restored back to what the fairway
Speaker 1: withs were back in the day.
Speaker 3: The fairway goes all the way to the native basically, yeah,
Speaker 3: there isn't. I mean there's some there is some maintained
Speaker 3: rough out there, but in art right, yeah, barely like
Speaker 3: there's yeah right, yeah, well that's funny because I can't
Speaker 3: even really remember where it might be maybe between uh
Speaker 3: numbers one and three, but there the fairway in a
Speaker 3: lot of places just goes right up to the native areas.
Speaker 3: And the native areas are really good. You know, there
Speaker 3: are a lot of places where you would lose a
Speaker 3: golf ball, but in the native areas that are actually
Speaker 3: in play, they're cultivated really well, so that you know,
Speaker 3: it's an unpredictable penalty hitting into there. You might not
Speaker 3: lose your golf ball in a lot of places, you
Speaker 3: might find it, but you also might find yourself in
Speaker 3: funny positions or there might be an opening for you
Speaker 3: to go for it from there. So in that sense
Speaker 3: they do even a good job off of the golf
Speaker 3: holes maintaining the course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the impact that fairway has.
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked a lot about these like massive
Speaker 1: landforms that the course is routed over. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of times you'll have this severe topography either running
Speaker 1: right down the center of the fairway where it acts
Speaker 1: like a hog's back where if you don't hit it
Speaker 1: right in the right space, you know place it's gonna
Speaker 1: shoot your ball right or left. You know what the
Speaker 1: fairway does is it just it's the most It's the
Speaker 1: best thing ever in golf is when the ball lands.
Speaker 1: That's when it gets really exciting because you don't know
Speaker 1: where it's going to end up and it and so
Speaker 1: many of these holes, well, whether it's you know, having
Speaker 1: a big landform on on one half of it and
Speaker 1: having a cascade down to the left or the right
Speaker 1: or down the middle and having it what it does
Speaker 1: is it makes the fairways are huge. But hitting it
Speaker 1: to the right spot and the fairways is so difficult
Speaker 1: because of because of the slopes in the short grass,
Speaker 1: the ball it's just you know, when the ball hits
Speaker 1: the ground. That's when all the you know, it's not
Speaker 1: done right.
Speaker 3: And the and it was bouncy out there when we
Speaker 3: played too, even though it was toward the end of
Speaker 3: what would usually be considered the prime golf season. The
Speaker 3: ball was really taking leaps off of the turf when
Speaker 3: it landed. And that combined with the bold slopes of
Speaker 3: the fairways at Old Town Club, which you were mentioning earlier.
Speaker 3: There's hogs back fairways that are fairways with high sides
Speaker 3: and low sides, fairways that go uphill, that go downhill.
Speaker 3: There's fairways that bounce off one hill and then bounce
Speaker 3: off another hill. I mean, there's just all sorts of
Speaker 3: things that the short grass covers there at Old Town
Speaker 3: where the ball can can run and bound and make
Speaker 3: all these crazy moves. You combine that with really good
Speaker 3: firm conditioning, and you've got the golf course, I think
Speaker 3: as it was really intended to play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's awesome. I mean, there was a was
Speaker 1: it a third hole?
Speaker 2: It was?
Speaker 1: The third hole is like the perfect illustration because we
Speaker 1: both you played it at absolutely perfectly and I like
Speaker 1: kind of chickened out and uh they eat. So this
Speaker 1: the third hole place back up to the clubhouse. In
Speaker 1: the in the fairway cants from right to left, and
Speaker 1: there's two intimidating bunkers set into the right side of
Speaker 1: the fairway, and that's right where you want to be.
Speaker 1: From there, you're going to get the flattest lie and
Speaker 1: have the best look and best angle into the green.
Speaker 1: And you know, if the fairway's really wide right and
Speaker 1: Garrett hit like this beautiful little cut right up the
Speaker 1: right side and had it was in the perfect spot.
Speaker 1: And I hit mine right up the middle, and what
Speaker 1: happened was it just bounded like probably forty yards left
Speaker 1: of where it landed into just it just rolled into
Speaker 1: the into the rough, and all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: had a semi blind wedgshot from a flyer lie into
Speaker 1: a green from like a very poor angle, you know,
Speaker 1: an uphill green from a poor angle. And it was
Speaker 1: you know, granted, like people are always going to look
Speaker 1: at like the result one time, but that it was
Speaker 1: just a stressful shot. And over the course of a round,
Speaker 1: all you're trying to do, if you're really trying to score,
Speaker 1: is you're trying to reduce stress, not put stress into
Speaker 1: your round. And you know, I hit a fine shot,
Speaker 1: but but it just was not a comfortable shot, right.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the thing, is that over those things
Speaker 1: compound over over the round. If you don't get it
Speaker 1: into the right position out there, you're going to be
Speaker 1: faced with a much more difficult shot.
Speaker 3: Right. And what amplified the difference between your way of
Speaker 3: playing that hole, in that one round, in my path
Speaker 3: to the hole, is that the pin was just on
Speaker 3: the other side of what we've been calling a Maxwell muffin, right,
Speaker 3: just this little subtle mound in the putting surface. A
Speaker 3: lot of greens old Town have these features where it's
Speaker 3: just a simple green, but there's one little mound that
Speaker 3: a lot of pin positions can play off of. Dunlop
Speaker 3: White refers to these. Dunlop White, the golf chairman at
Speaker 3: Old Town, refers to these as as muffins in the
Speaker 3: in the greens. And so when I played my shot
Speaker 3: into that green, I was I was up on the
Speaker 3: level with the green. It was a pretty easy shot, really,
Speaker 3: I just you know, it hit a nice easy shot
Speaker 3: and it got to the other side.
Speaker 2: Could you see the mound.
Speaker 3: Yes, so I could see right, Yeah, I could see
Speaker 3: everything on the green, right, I mean it was. It
Speaker 3: was a ways a way, a little bit elevated. I
Speaker 3: couldn't see it perfectly, but I had a comfortable vision
Speaker 3: of the green, and you know, so I.
Speaker 1: Seeing it, but I couldn't even see it, so I
Speaker 1: couldn't see where the pin was in relation to that
Speaker 1: that muffin. And when I hit my shot, I thought
Speaker 1: it was perfect, but I was just under the muffin,
Speaker 1: so I was putting up and over and you were
Speaker 1: over on the other side of it.
Speaker 3: I had a flat putt, yeah, right, I had an
Speaker 3: easy putt and your putt was up and over that mound,
Speaker 3: which is very, very difficult because if you're a little
Speaker 3: bit left, it goes left, if you're a little bit right,
Speaker 3: it goes right. You have to judge the speed just right.
Speaker 3: You know, we may have had even like a similar
Speaker 3: length of putt because I hit a much longer club
Speaker 3: into the green than you did. For one thing, But
Speaker 3: just because of the position on the green, one shot
Speaker 3: was a lot easier than the other. And I think
Speaker 3: that's so important, and it's such a smart design feature there,
Speaker 3: because if the green were just flat, there wouldn't have
Speaker 3: been that much of a difference between your angle into
Speaker 3: the green and my angle into the green. You would
Speaker 3: have hit your good wedge like you usually hit. Doesn't
Speaker 3: matter if you can see the green or not. You're
Speaker 3: going to get it up there within about twenty feet
Speaker 3: most of the time, and if the green is flat,
Speaker 3: you'll have basically the same putt that I would have.
Speaker 3: But but that wasn't the case. And by the way,
Speaker 3: this is just the This is probably the one hole
Speaker 3: that I played better than Andy during our round at
Speaker 3: all time, which is maybe why it was, but it
Speaker 3: was it was a good illustration of what the hole does.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 1: Those greens are are so cool. I just the the
Speaker 1: roles are just I we talked about this the last
Speaker 1: time we talked about Maxwell, but they're just amazing because
Speaker 1: they just bring so much thought. I like found myself
Speaker 1: like just having so much fun on and around the
Speaker 1: greens because you know, you start to figure out, like
Speaker 1: the key to those greens is you just have to
Speaker 1: find the high point of the muffins, right, and you
Speaker 1: have to read everything off of that and what part
Speaker 1: of the muffin you're putting over it, and it once
Speaker 1: you it kind of unlicked and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it just it's so fun because it is like you're
Speaker 1: just looking at all these different shots and the different
Speaker 1: ways you can play shots off these things, especially when
Speaker 1: you're chipping. I mean, it's just a just a really
Speaker 1: really neat place. It's a golf course, that's yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean that's the place. And the other thing about it
Speaker 1: is the club's very i mean very relaxed place. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a very golf centric place.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah. The the the lounge was a was a
Speaker 3: cool place to hang out. There are people who are
Speaker 3: just they're having a good time. You know. We had
Speaker 3: good talks with people and you know, always felt welcome
Speaker 3: and like we could walk around the golf course and
Speaker 3: nobody really cared and so so great, A great place
Speaker 3: to hang out and yeah, just a tremendously fun golf
Speaker 3: course too, uh to play. I feel like it's it's
Speaker 3: pretty underrated. I don't know, would you go. It gets
Speaker 3: ranked on these lists and stuff. I think people recognize
Speaker 3: that it's a great course, but to me, it just
Speaker 3: feels like it's on a level with other courses that
Speaker 3: consistently get ranked higher or that are discussed more. Do
Speaker 3: you get the sense that it's a bit underrated in
Speaker 3: the discussion right now, I do.
Speaker 1: I think it's just where it is. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: this effect of.
Speaker 2: It to me.
Speaker 1: If if it was in a major city, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's as good as anything. I mean, I'm sitting
Speaker 1: in a major city and it's as good as anything here,
Speaker 1: if not better, and the like you go down there,
Speaker 1: they're just you know, I don't. I think part of
Speaker 1: it's due to the way the rankings are done, like
Speaker 1: Golf Digest specifically, like you could dock it down for
Speaker 1: you know, protecting par or whatever they're you know, I
Speaker 1: mean essentially they have like four of their eight eight
Speaker 1: or nine categories are devoted to difficulty. So like that's
Speaker 1: how I could see it getting bumped down there. It's
Speaker 1: really well ranked I think in the UH in the
Speaker 1: Golf Week rankings, I think it's like nineteen or twenty,
Speaker 1: and that's of in classic courses and that you know,
Speaker 1: the courses around it I would associate with like where
Speaker 1: it should be.
Speaker 2: But in terms of the.
Speaker 1: The golf I don't think it's I think I don't
Speaker 1: think I mean, I hate ranking there's I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's even in the top one hundred of
Speaker 1: the of the Golf Digest rankings, which is yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely insane.
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, I mean I wasn't even talking about
Speaker 3: the rankings so much as because I mean, I just
Speaker 3: don't think it was more just the Do people talk
Speaker 3: about it as a great course that often, maybe because
Speaker 3: maybe because it just doesn't give visited even among people
Speaker 3: who go to a lot of private courses to play.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing like Cal Club is a good comparison.
Speaker 1: It gets talked about a ton, and it's because it's
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, right, I think, you know, I think
Speaker 1: that Old Town's got a little bit more variety, the routings,
Speaker 1: a little bit more creative. The sites are actually kind
Speaker 1: of similar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Cal Club's a decent comparison right where both courses
Speaker 3: are are sort of meeting their potential right now. You
Speaker 3: don't play those courses and think like, oh man, they
Speaker 3: didn't do enough there or they kind of screwed that up.
Speaker 3: You go around thinking, wow, there was really good restoration
Speaker 3: slash renovation work done here. But yeah, I would say
Speaker 3: just straight out the holes, the golf holes at Old
Speaker 3: Town are better. Yeah, they're better golf holes.
Speaker 1: And I'd agree with that, but it's like the you know,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, how often are people in Winston Salem.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that's why it doesn't get talked about
Speaker 1: as much, is that. I mean, it's only an hour
Speaker 1: and twenty from Charlotte, which you know, but I mean
Speaker 1: in terms I've heard that North Carolina is not the South,
Speaker 1: you know, but i'd equated to the South. You know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's mid Atlantic.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the people I'm definitely not an expert in that
Speaker 3: who says that North Carolina is not part of the South.
Speaker 1: From the South, you know, people from the South. I'm
Speaker 1: interested to hear people's opinion. But then people will say, oh,
Speaker 1: Holston Hills is in the South. Knoxville and Winston Salem
Speaker 1: are essentially on the same latitude line.
Speaker 2: There's a longitude longitude.
Speaker 3: It's longitude Yeah, well is it?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Wait wait, you know this is not something actually that
Speaker 3: we should we should debate because I'm going to be
Speaker 3: wrong either way. But anyway, it's uh yeah, maybe well
Speaker 3: who cares really, but maybe it's more cultural than geographic.
Speaker 3: In any case, it's it's close to a lot of places.
Speaker 3: It's close enough that a lot of folks can get
Speaker 3: to this course, and if you have the opportunity to
Speaker 3: do it, I think it's you've clearly got to get
Speaker 3: out there and see this place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a must see. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: arguably the best Perry Maxwell design.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what I was just going to ask. You know,
Speaker 3: we we were really lucky this summer to get to
Speaker 3: see some great Perry Maxwell golf courses, to see Prairie
Speaker 3: Dunes and play that several times, and then to get
Speaker 3: out to Southern Hills. Is it worth comparing Old Town
Speaker 3: to those two? Would that be illuminating or would that
Speaker 3: just be a flimsy exercise.
Speaker 2: I think it's tough to compare.
Speaker 1: I think they're all trying to be a little bit
Speaker 1: different things, right, I agree, And I think they're all
Speaker 1: in different situations.
Speaker 3: Prairie Dunes, I mean, there are some similarities between Prairie
Speaker 3: Dunes in terms of the club and the location. Not
Speaker 3: really though. Prairie Dunes is so much more isolated. But
Speaker 3: I just see maybe some parallels between what those courses
Speaker 3: could be. You know, if Prairie Dunes were to get
Speaker 3: those mowing lines where it seems like they should be
Speaker 3: and kind of complete its full restoration, it would be
Speaker 3: absolutely sensational. And it's on a better piece of land
Speaker 3: than Old Town, and it probably has a much higher
Speaker 3: ceiling than Old Town, you could argue, and by what
Speaker 3: you see at old Town is, as we've said several times,
Speaker 3: of course, meeting its full potential. And uh and so
Speaker 3: if you're looking for inspiration for how Prairie Dunes could
Speaker 3: could meet it's very significant, very substantial potential, then Old
Speaker 3: Town would be a good example of of where that
Speaker 3: could go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like every single person that that's a member at
Speaker 1: a Perry Maxwell course, that's like a Greens Mini chairman
Speaker 1: should be going to Old Town to see It's like
Speaker 1: this is what you have, you know, and it Reynolds Park,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the thing. Reynolds Park be the same thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean it's remarkable place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, old Town Club is is great. I just thought there.
Speaker 2: Were I wish there were.
Speaker 1: I wish there were Perry Maxwell's up here in Chicago.
Speaker 1: We got Fairways, which is nine a nine hole Max. Well,
Speaker 1: that's it's probably got like three holes of Maxwell left.
Speaker 2: That's a it's like an hour for me
Speaker 3: But I'm pretty sure that's more than Portland, Oregon has
Speaker 3: so so it at least is something